The Great Gatsby is about The Roaring Twenties

The argument

The claim here is that the novel's period setting is not background but the substance of its treatment of the American dream. The United States of the 1920s was a time of social and economic prosperity, often referred to as the roaring twenties or the jazz age, and proponents argue that the book's concerns are inseparable from what that decade did to the idea of success. Two features of the period are picked out. The first is a loosening of social constraint: many women felt comfortable being more expressive, the short flapper dress being the visible instance, and growing wealth translated into a wider sense of personal freedom. The second is prohibition, which did not end drinking so much as relocate it, producing speakeasies and a class of bootleggers, the class to which Jay Gatsby belongs. On this reading Gatsby's fortune is period-specific in a way that matters: a man of his origins could become spectacularly rich in that decade precisely because the law had created a lucrative illicit trade, so the character is an artefact of the twenties rather than a timeless figure of ambition. The connection to the dream follows from the economic boom. Where wealth was expanding and visibly changing people's positions, the ideal came to consist in becoming vastly wealthy and holding high social status. Proponents argue that this was a substitution rather than an intensification: the roaring twenties brought new ideals and morals, and under them success was measured by superficial means, money and a high social class, rather than by whatever the dream had previously involved. That substitution is what the novel is held to examine. To write about the roaring twenties, on this view, is already to write about the American dream, because the decade is where the dream acquired the acquisitive, status-driven shape the book depicts.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The 1920s was also full of corruption and crime. Due to the prohibition, illegal speakeasies and bootleggers became popular. In The Great Gatsby, the character Meyer Wolfsheim is based on Arnold Rothstein, a famous gangster that is speculated to have fixed the World Series in 1919. The novel also highlights the immorality of the characters, especially regarding adultery. Every character has either cheated on their spouse or have encouraged it. Gatsby is indifferent about Daisy being married and still attempts to pursue her. Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker both help bring Gatsby and Daisy together. Tom Buchanan cheated on his wife with multiple women.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The 1920s also had a rise in crime.